"Modern media texts contain a great many statements about what people must not do in a crisis," said Reet Hiiemäe, a senior researcher at the Estonian Literary Museum. "At the same time, if we look at folklore at the grassroots level, there is a strong emphasis on agency — on what I can do and what depends on me."

For example, one of the central messages of the coronavirus crisis was the passive instruction: "Stay home!" In plague legends, however, people are given detailed guidance on how to defeat the plague after it enters a house in the form of a stranger, a goat or a bird, where to flee and what steps to take to survive both mentally and physically.

Hiiemäe, who has studied plague folklore for many years, noticed similarities between the way danger is portrayed in folklore and in modern crisis communication as early as the 2000s.

"At the time, there were fears surrounding AIDS and stories were circulating about people deliberately spreading infection with syringes in Estonia. The parallel with plague spirits immediately stood out to me," she recalled.

The connection between mythology and science has now come under closer scrutiny in an international project led by Aalto University, in which Hiiemäe and her colleagues are contributing through analysis of Estonian material. In a recent study, they asked volunteers to compare old legends and modern media texts in mental mapping workshops. The exercise revealed common ground between the two types of texts, as well as lessons that can be drawn from folklore.

"The strength of crisis folklore lies in the fact that it is highly experience-based. What it describes stems from people's real experiences of survival, but these are combined with a mythological worldview," the senior researcher said.

Human symbolic thinking

According to Reet Hiiemäe, Estonia's folklore archives are so rich that they contain material on almost every aspect of life. People have had to cope with crises throughout history and past experiences of dealing with them are preserved in archived legends and personal accounts. Hiiemäe sees the greatest value in the latter, as the material is readily comparable with modern experiences.

"People's ways of thinking and reacting have not changed all that much. A person is still a person," she said.

The ongoing project focuses on health and environmental crises. One example from folklore is the tradition of wandering lakes. In most stories, lakes fly away because they have been deeply offended or angered by something foolish people have done.

"That foolishness usually involves pollution or what might be called moral pollution, for example when people start fighting too much among themselves," Hiiemäe said.

In one story, a lake flew away after becoming angry with wedding guests who had come to blows at a wedding. As a result, bodies of water are often portrayed as thinking, feeling and acting in much the same way as humans.

Hiiemäe said this can be compared with modern reactions when a body of water is threatened by pollution. During discussions about plans to build a pulp mill in Tartu County, for example, people began speaking about the Emajõgi River as if it were a distinct, personified being.

"I see similarities with mythological legends here as well. Once you start noticing them, this kind of symbolic thinking echoes throughout our seemingly rational world," the senior researcher said.

She also observed symbolic thinking familiar from folklore in communication surrounding pandemic crises. In her research, she highlighted this through cartographic representations, examining the spatial relationships people use when talking about danger.

"People still imagine danger in relation to their immediate surroundings and often as something moving in a particular direction," she said.

For example, an epidemic can spread in any direction, although its spread is influenced to some extent by population density, human behavior and other factors. Criminals can likewise move in any direction.

"In folklore, however, there is a specific point A from which the danger comes and point B toward which it moves. Those outside that trajectory are considered protected. In that sense, folklore can be a little too simplistic. At the same time, we encounter a similar simplification of information in modern official hazard maps," Hiiemäe said.

Simplification and constrast

The comparison between folklore and modern crisis texts revealed a clear difference in tone when it comes to guiding people's behavior. Folklore places greater emphasis on the actions individuals can take. In Hiiemäe's view, this approach is more closely tied to personal responsibility.

"If [modern] communication consists mainly of telling people what they are not allowed to do, then at that negative level of action it also becomes difficult to take responsibility for anything," she said.

One similarity she sees in both types of texts is their reliance on stark contrasts. In folklore, this takes the form of instructions: if you do one thing, you survive; if you do another, you perish. Modern crisis communication likewise tends to frame situations in terms of heroes and villains, the guilty and the virtuous.

"For example, danger is often seen primarily in specific people who have not been vaccinated. In that way, however, other factors contributing to the spread of infection may receive insufficient attention," Hiiemäe said.

The same kinds of contrasts are reflected in cartographic representations of danger. During outbreaks of African swine fever, for example, media outlets published crisis maps on which counties in the so-called danger zone were marked in red, while safe areas were shown in white.

"Now imagine wild boars running around in the forest. They do not take into account that a county border ends here and that they should go no farther," the senior researcher said.

According to Hiiemäe, this kind of simplified framing can create a false sense of security by suggesting that danger exists only within a particular area or around a particular person and nowhere else. In reality, the nature of a threat usually depends on a range of factors that can change over time.

The gap between bans and reality

One of the major goals of modern crisis communication is to combat the spread of misinformation. In Hiiemäe's view, however, this conflict cannot be resolved through opposition alone.

"If people naturally seek ways to act, because otherwise fear and helplessness set in, then simply imposing prohibitions is not constructive in my opinion. Instead, we should look at what people can and want to do, why they want to do it and whether that can be channeled in a constructive direction," she said.

If public communication shows little interest in how people actually behave, a gap emerges between the ideal and reality. At that point, grassroots responses may begin to diverge from official warnings and guidance. Conspiracy theories, miracle cures and behavior inspired by such ideas can become more appealing.

A recent example of this gap emerged in messages sent to the public about drone threats. The first alert simply informed people that there was a threat in Estonia and instructed them to take shelter. Many people were confused about where to shelter, however, since the options available in a ninth-floor city apartment differ greatly from those in a farmhouse with a fieldstone cellar.

"Here again, everything comes down to a specific micro-level perspective: where the threat is coming from and where I can go. It is essentially the same kind of thinking found in legends — clearly stating what a person's responsibilities and possible actions are at a given time and place," Hiiemäe said.

According to her, drone-threat alerts have since been adapted in a more flexible manner.

Folklore therefore offers clues both about what modern crisis communication should avoid and about what it should take more consciously into account. One important lesson is the value of providing concrete guidance tailored to specific locations, communities and individuals.

"One of the main aims of the study is to show that all crisis communication should relate to people's long-standing natural patterns of response — to the things that create a sense of security," she said.

Reet Hiiemäe and her colleagues discuss their findings in the journal Folklore.

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